CAREER: Efficient brain connectome dynamics enabling transitions across cognitive domains

在日常生活中，我们必须在不同的认知领域，如记忆、语言、社会、情感和感知过程中不断快速地过渡。该项目旨在展示大脑如何在如此广泛的认知过程中保持快速转换的能力，同时在需要时仍然能够保持对单一过程的稳定关注。具体来说，研究人员预测了大脑连接状态的关键作用，即分布的大脑区域如何在任何给定时刻同步活动，在不同的大脑状态之间的自发转换使认知领域之间的转换成为可能。在这里，当每个状态允许不同的大脑区域相互连接时，大脑状态被认为是多样化的。跨认知领域的灵活转换有助于在生活的各个领域和阶段的适应性功能。因此，了解大脑过程对认知转变的影响将对心理健康、教育等领域产生广泛的影响。直接建立在这项研究的基础上，动手教育创新和公众宣传计划，以建立对正在进行的大脑过程及其含义的更广泛认识。由于认知灵活性的广泛重要性，从该项目中获得的见解可能对理解和改善发展轨迹以及提高生活质量具有深远的影响。在经典的转换范式中，跨认知领域切换的能力并没有得到很好的体现；先验范式通常需要在一小组任务规则或刺激特征之间切换，通常在一个认知领域内。提出的研究引入了一种更生态有效的范式，在这种范式中，参与者检测目标图像或声音，这些图像或声音在不同的认知领域之间迅速切换。这种模式，通过设计，增加了认知转换需求。由于日常生活中的认知域转换以不同的速度发生，因此这项工作采用了一种尖端的方法，在fMRI中同时记录大脑连接，以最好地捕捉慢过程，并在脑电图中对快速过程具有敏感性。具体而言，目标1测试大脑连接状态是否以优化大脑区域随时间连接多样性的顺序发生。目的2测试不同的大脑连接状态序列是否支持快速跨越认知领域的行为表现，同时保持专注于单个领域的能力。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

In everyday life, we must continuously and rapidly transition across diverse cognitive domains such as memory, language, social, emotional, and perceptual processes. This project aims to show how the brain maintains the ability to rapidly transition among such a broad range of cognitive processes while still being able to maintain stable focus on a single process when needed. Specifically, the researchers predict a key role for the brain’s state of connectivity, i.e., how distributed brain regions synchronize activity at any given moment, with spontaneous transitions between a diverse set of such brain states enable transitions across cognitive domains. Here, brain states are considered diverse when each of the states allows a different set of brain regions to connect with each other. Flexible transitions across cognitive domains contribute to adaptive functioning in all areas and stages of life. Thus, understanding what brain processes contribute to cognitive transitions would have broad implications for mental health, education, and beyond. Directly building on this research, hands-on educational innovations and public outreach are planned to create broader awareness of ongoing brain processes and their implications. Due to the wide-ranging importance of cognitive flexibility, insights gained from this project may have far-reaching consequences for understanding and improving developmental trajectories and enhancing quality of life.The ability to switch across cognitive domains is not well-captured in classic shifting paradigms; Prior paradigms typically require switching across a small set of task rules or stimulus features, often within one cognitive domain. The proposed research introduces a more ecologically valid paradigm in which participants detect target images or sounds that rapidly switch among diverse cognitive domains. This paradigm, by design, increases cognitive transition demands. Because cognitive domain transitions in everyday life occur at various speeds, this work takes a cutting-edge approach to record brain connectivity concurrently in fMRI to best capture slow processes, and in EEG to have sensitivity to fast processes. Specifically, Objective 1 tests whether brain connectivity states occur in sequences that optimize the diversity of how brain regions are connected over time. Objective 2 tests whether sequences of diverse brain connectivity states support behavioral performance when rapidly transitioning across cognitive domains, whilst retaining the ability to focus on individual domains.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.